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18 December 2025

CICECO Researcher Leads International Experiment at European Synchrotron Facility

CICECO Researcher Leads International Experiment at European Synchrotron Facility

A major international experimental programme at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) has been approved under a Block Allocation Group (BAG) proposal led by a researcher from CICECO – Aveiro Institute of Materials. The project, entitled “Element-resolved exploration of the kinetics and de-coupling between magnetic and structural transitions in first-order phase transition magnetic refrigerants”, will run over four years, with 36 hours of synchrotron beam time allocated annually.

The initiative is coordinated by João Amaral, Assistant Researcher at the University of Aveiro and Coordinator of CICECO Group 2. The consortium brings together partners from TU Darmstadt (Germany), Université de Caen Normandie (France), and the Universities of Aveiro and Porto (Portugal), reinforcing CICECO’s role in leading international collaborations in advanced materials investigation.

The experimental work will be carried out at the ESRF ID12 beamline, using the ULMAG (ULtimate MAGnetic characterisation) setup. This infrastructure enables simultaneous and element-specific measurements, including X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD), allowing direct access to the magnetic behaviour of individual elements within complex materials.

Recent investigations conducted by the team have demonstrated a pronounced kinetic decoupling between magnetic and structural transitions in first-order phase transition magnetic materials, a behaviour not captured by conventional macroscopic approaches. The ESRF experiments coordinated by CICECO aim to address this limitation by probing transition kinetics at the element-resolved level, providing a more detailed understanding of the underlying physical mechanisms.

By leading this long-term experimental programme at one of Europe’s leading large-scale research infrastructures, CICECO strengthens its position in fundamental investigation on magnetic materials and solid-state physics. The expected results may also support the development of magnetocaloric materials with improved performance for applications such as cryogenic cooling in hydrogen liquefaction systems.

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